PHOENIX — Sgt. 1st Class Cory Remsburg and his father, Craig, knew they would be watching the State of the Union address in the box reserved for guests of the first lady. But they didn’t know exactly where their seats would be.
Someone at the top of the stairs directed them to the first row. Craig Remsburg guided his son — who walks with a cane and has limited use of his left arm after nearly being blown apart in Afghanistan — down the five steps.
Craig Remsburg scanned the names taped to each chair. There was one that said Dr. Jill Biden. Another said Michelle Obama.
The chair next to that one had his son’s name. “Oh,” he thought. “OK, here we are.”
In that seat, in the minutes that followed, Cory Remsburg would be seen on TV by an estimated 33.3 million viewers. He would turn into a representative for all wounded soldiers. And he would be lauded by the president as a role model, a man whose own struggles to walk and talk again mirrored the struggles of the nation.
It was something the 30-year-old didn’t expect when he left his suburban Phoenix home and boarded a flight Monday to Washington, D.C.
Remsburg had received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He had been feted at Gilbert Town Hall, and a local group of motorcycle riders welcomed him home when he was released from rehabilitation centers.
But while sitting in the front row of the gallery at the U.S. Capitol, the recipient of a nearly two-minute standing ovation Tuesday night, Remsburg would become part of the national conversation.
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“I don’t think I deserve that much recognition,” Remsburg said Wednesday, during an interview after landing at Sky Harbor International Airport. “I was just doing my job.”
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